Labor Study

Chapter 1

1. What role does labor play in the early settlement of Europeans in the Americas? (20-

• New Territory could enhance a nation’s power and prestige. Conquered peoples could be converted to Christianity. New land could provide wealth from mining, farming, or trade for governments, investors, and settlers. All depends on labors.
• Encomienda systems provoked Indian resistance and from 1570s on, the Spanish partly replaced it with a less harsh system, known as repartimento [obligated natives to provide involuntary work but compensated labor on public works]
• Some natives were resettled into peasant communities until resistance from the natives forced different sources of labor. See below.
• French, Dutch, English turned to the African slave trade
• Conquistadors were not going to do the work themselves, nor did they attract sufficient emigrants from Spain or Portugal to work for them in the Americas.
• They hoped that labor would be provided by native people who could be forced to work for them.
• Colonial governors exploited native labor to obtain private income.
• Native labor frequently didn’t fulfill colonists expectations, even though distance from colonial authority often enabled them to treat indigenous populations mercilessly with little fear of restraint.
• Disease and the harsh demands of forced labor killed large number of natives in Spanish America throughout the sixteenth century.
• Processes that help create the Atlantic Proletariat
• •Expropriation: The seizure of common property used by the many (ordinary people) and put in the hands of the few (governments/kingdoms, colonial corporations).  Examples:
• –Spanish conquistadors seizing lands in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America to create enconmiendas controlled by wealthy Spanish landlords under the Spanish crown.
• –Wealthy English lords enclosing the commons (shared agricultural lands used by poor communities) in England and Ireland.
• –English corporations like the Virginia Company that set up agricultural colonies on the east coast, claiming property for themselves and the English crown.
• •Exploitation: The act of mistreating someone to benefit from their labor.  The work involved in expropriation was particularly exploitative:
• –Encomiendas: Native Americans forced to work for the Spanish landlords, clearing land and harvesting crops. African slaves later imported to the Spanish colonies
• –Enclosing the commons: kicked people off the land, forcing them to become tenant farmers, move to the cities for work, or become indentured servants in America.  Poor people also imprisoned and forced to work; many sent to work as sailors or to work in the Americas.
• –The Virginia company and other colonial corporations: pushed Native Americans off of the land (violently), forced indentured servants and later African slaves to work under brutal conditions.

1. Explain the origins of slavery in the Americas after 1492.

• In 1492, Columbus found the new land, and they need labor to farm, mine, and, trade. They use natives at first. However, Some Spaniards criticized forced labor; Portuguese found Brazilian difficult to control. They started to use Africans to substituting Native American labor.
• In 1510, the Spanish crown legalized the sale of Africans; and in 1518, a Spanish ship carried the first full cargo of Africans across the Atlantic. By the 1540s, slaves were distributed around all the Spanish and Portuguese colonies. And in 1619, the first African slave was brought to Jamestown, Virginia in the U.S.
• As a part of a large commerce-triangular trade, Atlantic slave trade strengthened African and American slavery.
• Moreover, after several revolts, especially Bacon’s rebellion, masters were more willing to buy cheap slaves instead of free labors and indentured servants. They can have more control.

1. Explain William Penn’s commentary on the Delaware Peoples.

• First of all, William Penn is a Quaker, who believes that through silence god can speak to people, spirit of love, and inner light of everyone.
• This articles is written for European audiences and call for togetherness to this land of common wealth.

1. Provide an overview of C.L.R. James’s historical understanding of slave uprisings in the early days of colonialization.

• The revolts in the US follow the same line as those in the West Indies before 1789, constant ill-organized uprisings which are always crushed with comparative ease.
• An example of a typical revolt is the one at Stono, which neglected an important fact that Negroes outnumbered the whites four to one in the state at that time. A thousand slaves joined the revolt led by Gabriel, however a storm accidently destroyed their plan.
• People were also trying to gain support other than slaves. An example would be the one led by Vesey. They were betrayed by someone who was taken good care of by his master.
• Nat Turner’s revolt was known for its disproportion in the amount of people from the two sides. It only had around seventy negroes. Nothing on a large scale happen afterwards.
• However, when the economy and politics collapse in the north, it might be an opportunity for slaves to voice their opinions.

Chapter 2 and selected readings

1. Explain the racialization of slavery in British North America. (Why and when is slavery conditioned by African identity) 80

Law passed in the 1660s had formally recognized slavery and begun to define it in racial terms.

Why: reduce tensions among whites

The revolts of poor whites and the indentured servants pushed the racialization of slavery.

• Laws were passed the firmly recognized slavery with racial terms. hardened the racial boundary in the colonies.

• ex. Slaves can’t carry weapons, move freely, earn money  

• The laws also gave slave masters unlimited power over slaves.

A master who murdered his slave would not be charged, because a master wouldn’t willingly destroy his own property

1. What was the status of women in pre-revolutionary North America?

• Unequal society, no formal right to vote. even the elite women did not share the economic status of even the poor men.

1. What does Peter Kalm’s commentary on “Unfree Labor in Pennsylvania, 1753” tell us about working conditions in this region? How does it contrast with work systems in the south?

• More focused on family farms, more free slaves, slavery is less wide spread

Indentured servitude

1. In the period just before the American Revolution, slaves made petitions demanding their freedom. On what basis do these petitions base this claim to liberty? What do these documents tell us about the people who authored them, and the times they lived in?

They are not all salvages. Christianity. They are well-educated. They are a product of 1770s’, before American Revolution. Slaves from places like Massachusetts. They might work as a cleaner, a buyer, instead of farmer. They were from North.